Robert Fi l l i ou, 13 Ways to Use Emmett Williams’ Skull, 1963. Photograph by Dorine van der Klei.

Similar to the act of following a recipe to prepare a dish, the artworks in Recipes for an Encounter follow a set of instructions for completion. In an intergenerational mix, works from the 1960s and 70s are brought into dialog with contemporary projects that also act as catalysts for encounters. Conceptual artists of the 1960s would often conjure a set of instructions or rules that they closely adhered to in order to lend their works and ideas tangible form. Artists associated with Happenings or with the Fluxus movement created instructions in the form of open-ended event scores to solicit audience interaction. Influenced by John Cage’s incorporation of chance elements into his music, many of these artworks-as-recipes allowed chance to determine their outcome, thereby anticipating an encounter with the unexpected. The contemporary works in this exhibition similarly contrast order and its interruption. Starting with a specific recipe or rigid set of instructions, they nonetheless morph and change over the course their improvisation.

Description of Special Event: 'Recipes Interpreted: An Afternoon of Shared Instructions Recipes and Scores'
Sunday October 31, 2010 2:00 – 3:30 pm

'Recipes Interpreted' will address the anticipatory nature of the artworks in the exhibition by bringing together artists and cultural practitioners to share recipes and instructions in interactive presentations and performances. These collaborative ventures reach across disciplines and welcome open ended outcomes, often determined by participant interaction. Robert Kushner, who served as assistant manager for the artist-run restaurant FOOD located in Soho in the early ‘70s, will recount some of the encounters he witnessed while working on this collaborative project with its founders Gordon Matta-Clark, Caroline Goodden, Rachel Lew and Suzanne Harris. Artist Marisa Jahn, whose project Commuter Cookout is on view in the exhibition, will present recent projects with Steve Shada that involve cooking with ecological travesties such as lightning, tail pipes, and engine blocks. Musician, researcher and human rights advocate Karen Hakobian will share a recipe on How to Colonize a Nation, leading the audience on a short training session on optimal colonization strategies. Musicians Annie Gosfield and Roger Kleier will be interpreting an experimental music score by artist Matt Volla titled Tennis Music/Music Tennis, also on view in the exhibition.

Bios of Curators

Berin Golonu is a doctoral student in the Visual and Cultural Studies program at the University of Rochester. As Associate Curator of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco from 2003 to 2008, she curated and co-curated many exhibitions, including “The Gatherers: Greening Our Urban Spheres” (2008); “The Way That We Rhyme: Women, Art & Politics” (2008); “Bay Area Now” (2004 and 2008); “The Zine UnBound” (2005); a series of exhibitions highlighting collective activity titled “Peer Pleasure” (2006), and “Underplayed: A Mix-Tape of Music-Based Videos” (2006). Her feature articles and reviews have appeared in numerous national and international arts publications, including Art in America, Art Nexus, Art on Paper, Art Papers, Contemporary, frieze, Modern Painters, Sculpture, and Zing Magazine. Golonu holds an MA from the Visual and Critical Studies Program at CCA, where she wrote her master’s thesis on the arts publication as a curatorial site.

Candice Hopkins is the Sobey Curatorial Resident at the National Gallery of Canada and is the former Director/Curator of Exhibitions at the Western Front, Vancouver, where she recently curated exhibitions on the themes of networks and art, architecture and disaster, and time and obsolescence (with Jonathan Middleton). She has an MA from the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, NY where she received the Ramapo Curatorial Prize for the exhibition Every Stone Tells a Story: The Performance Work of David Hammons and Jimmie Durham. Her writing is featured in the journal Leonardo, www.horizonzero.ca, C Magazine, FUSE Magazine and in the edited publications Reinventing Radio: Aspects of Radio as Art, Campsites, Informal Architectures: Space and Contemporary Culture, and Making a Noise! Aboriginal Perspectives on Art, Art History, Critical Writing and Community. Hopkins has given talks at Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Dak’Art_Lab, Senegal, and in Canada at the University of British Columbia, Simon Fraser University, and the Alberta College of Art and Design.